Pimpetarians of the Great Northwest

Great news for guilt-ridden pornsick knobs and the soy-addled hot babes who give’em lap dances: the vegan strip club. At this Portland, OR depot for human degradation, the strippers don’t wear leather, and the menu features fajitas made with fake meat. However, according to a writer who attended the grand opening, tofurkey wasn’t exactly the main attraction. In fact, nary a morsel was anywhere in sight. What a shocker.

When scandalized blamer Jo contacted me about the aforementioned strip joint, I got all fired up to make remarks like “At last! Now dudely Portland hipsters can feel sanctimonious while actively oppressing women!” And “A vegan strip club makes about as much sense as Jews for Jesus, Log Cabin Republicans, and biologists who worship an invisible cosmic concierge.” I hinted at the feminism/vegetarianism connection in a recent post on the horror that is the megameatyocracy, and I’ll restate here: I have found animal cruelty to be inconsistent with the revolution. It follows that veganism, if practiced for reasons of ethics, is inconsistent with strip clubs.

But it turns out the vegan aspect of this vegan strip club thing is kind of a non-story, by dint of the paucity of actual veganosity going on there. The women employees themselves aren’t necessarily vegans, and the customers are not scanned at the door for bacon-breath. The owner is supposedly a shunner of meat, and a local Fox News report describes him as having “ideals,” but a guy who’s quoted as saying “we put the meat on the pole, not on the plate” is no heroic activist; he’s just another fucking pimp with a smirky angle.

I would have guessed they would have gone the “hot ladies covered in bacon grease” route before the “strip club with a salad bar.” A new philosophy, Knobjectivism, a defense of Capitajism, by Ayn Randy.

I have no time to improve the above horrible yet appropriate punning and typo-ology.

“It follows that veganism, if practiced for reasons of ethics, is inconsistent with strip clubs.”

Why? Because a strip club is somehow more inconsistent with veganism than a big box shop, sweat shop, or publishing company?

No, because veganosity says “I’m against oppression” and strip clubs worship oppression. Thus a “vegan strip club” does not compute. And, as it turns out, does not exist. I have not, as you seem to suggest, argued that veganism is not inconsistent with Wal-Marts.

By the way, to what are alluding when you say “tired anti-sex-work argument”? I’m making the anti-oppression argument. When I do attack what you call sex “work” I attack not a class of employment but a global paradigm that spuriously assumes that prostituted women (sex “workers”) have ‘consented’ to their own abuse. It is true that I have made this argument before, which I do not believe in and of itself invalidates it; if my ineptitude as a writer makes it seem “tired” to you, my apologies.

I know a man who gave up meat after his true identity as a john was discovered. He said he gave up meat because he was trying to be a better person. Now, if he had give up meat AND pay-for-rape activities, that would be great. But he kept on paying for sex with enslaved women while proclaiming himself a better person for giving up meat.

Flores

I find this to be an excellent companion piece to your earlier post against meat consumption. Indeed, nobody’s innocent. While I’m sure some vegans deserve the stereotype of self-righteousness, I also think people often unfairly use the allegation to discredit the movement. You see the same argument used against various other progressive ideologies.

Unlike the anti-sex-work argument, the virgin/whore dichotomy is actually tired and worthless. We don’t need such baggage. That neither vegans nor feminists apply their principles perfectly isn’t reason to reject those principles. The all-or-nothing mentality is a tool of the patriarchy.

Heh, “Knobjectivism”- I did laugh when that popped up because it kind of works for the Boobies and Coffee shop, Boobies and Hair Cut Place, Boobies and Dentist, ad infinitum. I made that last one up, but you know it must exist.

I do know in my heart of heart that we’d be a lot better off with a lot less meat consumption, and I have begun to recognize very much how completely addicted to food I am. It isn’t necessarily that I eat a lot, it is what I eat and how it has been completely geared towards the most bang for the buck in terms of serotonin or whatever release. It is scary.

RedFemHedon.,

You missed:

G.O.B.jectivism- an ism relating to Arrested Development

RadFemHedonist

I haven’t decided to go vegan yet, I won’t have anything to do with strip clubs, exploitative paid sexual harrassment and assault that they are. I do get free range eggs and organic dairy, I’m trying to make changes to my diet without making my already bad health worse.

i’m a first-time visitor to your blog and i love it. i have been vegan for three years and a feminist all my life. i do see feminism and foregoing meat-eating as two sides of a coin that also includes sweatshop labor, strip clubs, corporate conglomeration and a multitude of other issues. while nobody is perfect, pure or blameless it does frustrate me when i meet other vegans who have a disconnect between their avoidance of “oppression” against animals and their willing involvement in other sorts of oppressions: like oppressing third-world workers so they can have trendy non-leather footwear, or oppressing women by trying to restrict their birth choices, or oppressing sexuality by assigning labels and condemnation, or oppressing (if that can be the right term) the earth by replacing their meat consumption with processed, GMO, corporate soy. i started out as a militant vegan and have become both more moderate and more spread out in my decisions, actions and ideals about supporting the growth of a more just, equal, safe and fair world. it’s wonderful to eat less meat, to pay women equally, to celebrate sexuality, to buy fair-trade and to walk instead of driving – but none of these actions are mutually exclusive – ideally they would all be part of a singular worldview that wants life to be easier and happier for all who live. end preach. :)

Gerda

another first time blamer here, having lurked a few times, wow, real women! hi all :-)
wot chandelle said about thinking holistically about the exploitation thing, i would add in environmental issues too.
twisty you have a real way with words, the way you compress a complex idea into a witty sentence. respect!

Flores

Indicting vegans for buying things isn’t always valid, chandelle. It would depend on the alternative. Corporate soy strikes me as better than corporate meat. The same goes for footwear. In any case, these little things aren’t going to end oppression. For that we need revolution.

josiemysourceofmostfrustration

You may be interested in reading some of the writing of Rutgers law professor and radical animal rights activist, Gary Francione. He is an animal rights abolitionist and feminist who strongly opposes the animal welfare movement as being ineffective. He wrote an article here unfavorably comparing the animal welfare movement with postmodern feminism. One of his major points is that post-modern feminism and animal welfare are not social justice movements because they both allow oppressors to feel more comfortable while commodifying women and animals respectively. Animal rights abolitionism and radical feminism are, however, true social justice movements because they instead work to eradicate oppression. Here is a link to the article:http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/?p=133

julia

What a grreat blog!
As a second wave feminist who has lived in Portland, I can relate. I can’t say I understand PDX after only 8 months there, but it is very white male hipster save the trees misogynist. The two weeklies are covered with porn, they love Dan Savage, the nauseating Portland Mercury has beautiful almost naked women on the cover – but never men, beautiful bikini-wearing women being almost raped by a man on the cover, and I’m guessing that there are women who think this is cool. Ariel Gore lives in Portland, and although I love Hip Mama, I do not like her politics.
If you are over 40 in Portland, you are invisible.
Which means that if you are second wave, you are invisible.

“Last week Mr. Diablo put the club up for sale, although not because of the criticism, he said. He may have overestimated the appeal of stripping to vegans, or of vegan cuisine to striptease fans; an earlier vegan restaurant he ran was poorly received.”

Duh.

Diablo is a dipshit for thinking his club would fly in a city where “Best Titty Bar Steaks in Town!” makes an alternormal weekly cover and where news of a murdered 19-year-old prostitute elicits jokes about how great Portland’s sex industry is despite bludgeoned-to-death women’s bodies turning up occasionally.

[…] Jump to Comments Twisty Faster over at I Blame the Patriarchy has just tipped me off to what may be the dumbest thing I’ve heard of since I found out about the people behind Tapout: a vegan strip club in my home […]

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